Adele has spoken up about the hard times that followed the birth of her son, Angelo, a little over four years ago. In an interview for Vanity Fair magazine, the singer revealed she’d been suffering from postpartum depression, which, at first, she was very reluctant to accept and deal with.
“I had really bad postpartum depression after I had my son, and it frightened me,” she explained. “I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was very reluctant… My boyfriend said I should talk to other women who were pregnant, and I said, ‘Fuck that, I ain’t hanging around with a fuckin’ bunch of mothers.’ Then, without realising it, I was gravitating towards pregnant women and other women with children, because I found they’re a bit more patient”.
Opening up to one of her friends, though, was what really helped Adele move past the depression. She told Vanity Fair, “One day I said to a friend, ‘I fuckin’ hate this,’ and she just burst into tears and said, ‘I fuckin’ hate this, too.’ And it was done. It lifted”.
“My knowledge of postpartum — or postnatal, as we call it in England — is that you don’t want to be with your child,” she added. “You’re worried you might hurt your child; you’re worried you weren’t doing a good job. But I was obsessed with my child. I felt very inadequate; I felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life… It can come in many different forms”.
Ultimately, the secret lies in realising that new mums deserve some ‘alone time’, away from motherhood obligations, in order to regroup and acknowledge their own sense of self separately from their baby. And that’s exactly how Adele coped with the situation.
“Eventually I just said, I’m going to give myself an afternoon a week, just to do whatever the fuck I want without my baby,” she confessed. “ Four of my friends felt the same way I did, and everyone was too embarrassed to talk about it; they thought everyone would think they were a bad mom, and it’s not the case. It makes you a better mom if you give yourself a better time”.
Read Adele’s interview to Vanity Fair in full here
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